Page 161 of Broken Mafia Prince
“Your fight is my fight,” he cuts in, glaring at me. “Don’t bloody tell me I don’t have to be a part of this. I’m already a part of this, Raff. I became part of it the moment I stepped foot in Chicago.”
“This is dangerous, Matteo. The risks are?—”
He takes a step forward, jaw clenched. “You think I don’t know the risks? I do. I’m not a kid, Raff. I know exactly what I’m getting into, and I’m not backing out. So stop giving me a way out. I don’t want one.”
Matteo holds out his hand to me, eyes determined. “Are we doing this or not?”
A smile curves my mouth, and I clasp his hand. “We’re doing this.”
“Now for fuck’s sake, tell me you have a plan, and we aren’t just running headfirst into Edoardo’s trap,” he grouses. “While I’ve been itching to do something as crazy as that, I also plan on living to thirty.”
I throw my head back and let out a loud bark. “You crazy bastard.”
Hours later, I pull up at a run-down strip club. From the sideview mirror, I see Matteo’s head poke out from his truck, looking questioning. I didn’t tell him much more than we’re meeting some important people outside of town.
I step down from the car and crack my neck, waiting for the other man to reach my side.
“Does Giulia know this is where you get your stress relief?” he teases as we make our way into the building.
Ignoring him, I nod at the bouncer at the door, who looks rather uninterested in our arrival. The inside of the building is just as gloomy as the outside. A few drugged-out women twirl around the poles in the center of the room while rough-looking men leer at them, occasionally tossing a few crumpled dollar bills at their feet.
The club and the watered-down drinks they’re serving aren’t my business, though.
I continue to the back of the club where a thin curtain separates the private room from the rest of the club. A round, rusted metal table sits in the center of the room, with six men already seated around it.
“About time you got here,” one of the men says, puffing on his cigar.
“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting for long.” I pull out a chair and drop down into it.
All the men seated at the table have been carefully selected by me in this rebellion against my father. I’ve chosen them for a number of reasons—manpower, their possession of arms, and their ability to keep their mouths shut. It was almost impossible to find people willing to go up against my father, and I don’t blame them for not wanting to.
Edoardo is infamous for brutally crushing his enemies until nothing remains of them.
“No point wasting time—we all know why we’re here.” I lean forward. “My father is planning his final hit on the Montanaris. Bigger. Bloodier. Three days from now. He wants to finish what he started—wipe them out, take their territory, and make Enrico kneel.”
A hostile takeover, the kind that leaves bodies in the streets and sends a message no one can ignore.
At my side, I feel Matteo tense. Surprised murmurs ripple across the room, and I sit back, waiting for it to die down.
“No way,” someone scoffs. “Didn’t he just try to hit their shipment at the docks? Fine, they barely made it through, but both sides lost a lot of men in that shootout.”
“I can’t even believe it,” another follows. “There’s no way he’s able to regroup in such a short amount of time. We all saw the damage. Edoardo might have a lot of soldiers, but they’re not infinite.”
“You don’t know how desperate he is for Montanari blood,” I say. “He’s bringing in the Russians and the Vitellis. He thinks that attacking now that their defenses are weak. That they won’t see him coming.”
“Edoardo hates the Russians,” Matteo points out.
I slant him a look. “Exactly.”
The fact that my father has put aside his hatred for them for this war with the Montanaris just shows how deep he’s gotten. There’s no stepping back from this anymore for him. This willeither be the biggest loss of his life or his greatest victory. I’m going to do my damn best to make sure it’s the former.
“He’s a desperate motherfucker,” one of the men laughs.
“How are we doing this?” Matteo asks.
Silence falls over the room, the men looking at me with eyes full of expectation and trust. Every man here is depending on me to lead them through this, because they’ve all seen the effects of this war, and they know that no good can come out of more fighting. They know that if we don’t try to put an end to this, my father is going to bury us all.
“We have to stop my father and his soldiers before they get to the Montanaris,” I tell them. “You’re probably asking yourselves how the hell we’re going to do that.”
